Alert: Easiest craft ever! I saw this idea on Pinterest and did a very similar (but easier) version of it this afternoon. Here is the link to the original idea: * link-to-the-original-idea *, and here is my version:
It was unbelievably easy. Here are the supplies you need:
A package of adhesive-backed felt circles (the things they put on the back of picture frames)
8 little wooden ladybugs (I found mine in the wooden crafts section of A.C. Moore.)
Just stick a little felt circle to the back of each ladybug, and voila! Finis!
This is about a 2-minute craft. Cheap, easy, and helpful. I used these with several of my students this afternoon when we worked on our scales.
Presser Hall houses the Music Department at Hollins University
The Piano School participates in two festivals each year: the VMTA Fall Festival at Hollins University and the MTNA Studio Festival in my studio. I require my students to participate in at least one festival each year. So what are these festivals about, and which one is best for your child?
I have all of my very young, first-year students participate in the MTNA Studio Festival. Other students are free to select either festival. There are differences, however, and I will explain the VMTA Fall Festival in this post. Let's just call it the "Fall Festival" for the rest of this discussion.
VMTA Fall Festival
Saturday, November 17, 2012
The Fall Festival is always held in November, and it has taken place at Hollins University for as long as I can remember. Students register for the event one month in advance, but begin preparing before that. Here are the basic things to know:
Students are assigned a private "audition" time.
There is no audience.
Each student must play two pieces for a panel of two judges:
One historical piece in original form (Things from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods are eligible.)
One piece in a contemporary idiom in original form (something written in the 20th or 21st Century with a component that music theorists call "contemporary"...irregular meter, tone clusters, nontraditional notation, dissonance, whole tone scales, etc.)
Both pieces must be memorized.
The student must provide music scores (their books or sheet music) of the pieces for the judges to use.
The measures in the music must be numbered.
Sounds a little intimidating, right? But it's not. At least it's not bad for students who like undertaking challenges in piano. I don't recommend the fall festival for all students, but I do urge some types of students to give it a try. Certainly, advanced students should play in this festival. It gives them enough of a challenge that they have an achievable goal toward which to work. Elementary- and Intermediate-level students who are consistent practicers should try this festival as well. Here's the thing: if you hate it, I won't make you do it again next year. If you like it, then fabulous! You will have completed a substantial task and received encouraging commentary from the judges for your efforts. It's a good thing.
There are some students that I do not put in the Fall Festival:
Those who have severe anxiety
Those who don't have time and/or desire to finely polish and memorize two pieces
Students who have just started taking lessons
Students who have trouble maintaining a consistent practice schedule
The Fall Festival is not perfect. It's important to remember that the comments made by the judges are subjective and not entirely consistent:
One judge may say, "Terrific pedaling in the B Section!" The other judge may say, "I think you could use more pedal in the B Section."
One judge may circle a Superior rating and the other may circle a Very Good. Usually they are closer in line with each other than that, but the judges are only human. They may hear and interpret things differently.
There are occasionally new judges who are not familiar with the norms at this festival, but they are assigned to an audition room with a more experienced adjudicator.
The teacher will sometimes disagree with something a judge writes. No big deal! It's good to hear different points of view. Once I gave a student an "Excellent" rating because I felt her first piece was "Superior" and her second was "Very Good." I averaged the two. Her teacher did not concur with my assessment. That's fine. I've read comment sheets that had nothing but glowing remarks for both pieces, yet the judge circled an "Excellent" instead of "Superior" (Superior is the best.) That's fine, too. It's just a festival, and it's not the most important part of your journey as a piano student. Regardless of what a judge writes, you will still be a better pianist for having learned, memorized, and performed your pieces.
For those students and parents who are intrigued by the possibility of participating in the Fall Festival but don't understand some of the requirements listed above, please don't worry. I take care of selecting eligible music that is at the pianist's current level and make sure that the music is marked appropriately for the judges. All the parent has to do is provide transportation to and from the event.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Who are the judges? They are piano teachers from the Roanoke Valley. I'm a judge myself, but teachers do not judge their own students.
What do the judges do? They listen to each student and write encouraging commentary and suggestions on a sheet of paper and circle a rating at the bottom of the sheet. The comment sheets are returned to the teacher after the festival. I discuss these at subsequent lessons and return the comment sheets to the student.
What should students wear to the festival? Clean, casual clothes that are on the slightly nice side. Jeans and flip-flops are discouraged.
How much does the festival cost? This year the fee is $12, and if you are my student, you have already paid your festival fee.
What if a student makes mistakes or forgets part of the music? No problem. It happens all the time. The best thing to do is just go on as though there were no mistakes, or start back in on a part of the music you remember.
Is there a winner or a score given? There is no winner, and this is not a competition. There are ratings on the bottom of the comment sheet (Superior, Excellent, Very Good, Good, and Fair), and the judges will circle one of these. The overall rating is the higher of the two .
Can I bring photocopies of the music instead of the actual music books? No. That is not allowed (and it makes your teacher look like a nincompoop).
How many students participate in the Fall Festival? There are usually around 110 students from all around the Roanoke Valley at our festival location. Statewide, there are many more.
How do I register for the Fall Festival? Your teacher takes care of that. You just have to make sure your calendar is clear for the morning of the festival.
For more information about the VMTA Fall Festival, you may be interested in visiting the Roanoke Valley Music Teachers Association website: VMTA Fall Festival Information
Today was a music party day for some adult amateur musicians I know. I don't teach all of them, but we've developed a nice relationship in recent years because of these parties. I wrote about the concept of piano parties in an earlier article, and today I spent some time discussing the issue of performance anxiety with those in attendance.
It was interesting to hear some of the comments floating about as we mingled over mimosas and lobster bisque.
"I can't believe I still get nervous at these things."
"One day I will conquer my nerves."
"I'm glad we keep doing these parties, because I think they will help me get used to performing."
As the only piano teacher in the group, it sometimes falls to me to reassure and encourage. Adults need to know that it is "normal" to feel uneasy and anxious about performing. It happens to all of us.
One of the men is on a mission to finally overcome his performance anxiety by performing repeatedly in any setting he can find. He has a reference point in his mind of a time when he had to give daily lectures for an entire month on a topic about which he is very knowledgable. At first these lectures were nerve-wracking, but by the time the month was over, he had become not only comfortable speaking in front of people, but sort of energized and exhilarated. He is absolutely sure that he can achieve the same degree of comfort in piano performance with enough practice.
"It is painful when I screw up, but I'm just going to keep doing this until I can master it."
Another in the group wants to increase the frequency of our piano parties. She has a similar belief that she will become more at ease in front of the group if we do this more often.
A pianist at the party who is my student had her best day yet. Today she seemed less nervous than ever before and played with expression and focus in a way that was noticeably improved over past parties.
The concept of desensitizing oneself by performing more frequently is a sound one. I know that in my case, it has certainly proven to be true that the more I play in front of others, the less nervous I am doing it.
There are other factors to consider as well. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an adult or child student say, "I played this perfectly at home. I don't know why I messed up here," I could buy a new concert grand. It surprises musicians the first few times they discover this phenomenon. So, why can we play better at home than we can in a recital or at a lesson?
If you are a pianist, you are using a different instrument in each different setting.
We are used to the feel of home...the books on the piano, the lamp on our left, the sound of our dogs, the view from the window, the feel of the bench, etc. All of these little things contribute to our comfort level. When you take them away, everything feels different.
We are relaxed at home. No one is watching us.
We don't hear ourselves breathing and feel our heart thumping itself out of our chest at home.
We are hyper-sensitive to all sorts of stimuli when we are performing. Things that we don't notice at home become loud and obvious during a performance...a cough, a whisper, the squeak of a pedal, a creak in the floor, etc.
There is also the issue of distraction which can become worse when we are nervous.
We allow our minds to wander as we play.
"What are they thinking about my piece?"
"These keys look strange. Where is middle C?"
"I'm doing really well!"
"This is horrible. I can't believe I did that."
"I bet they think I'm doing great."
"They probably wish I'd stop playing ASAP."
We lose our place in the music. This is usually because we have not established an exact system of where to look during practice. If a piece is partially, but not fully, memorized, we might look at our hands for a while, but when we look back up at the score, we're lost! And when we get lost during a performance, it seems to take forever to find our place.
Our hands are shaking, and we can't stop thinking about that.
Our hands are sweating, and we start worrying that this will make us mess up.
Although I have not completely conquered performance anxiety, I have learned a few "tricks" that I can share with you.
Practice mindfully before your performance. In other words, keep your mind engaged in what you are doing rather than thinking about what's going on in the kitchen or what's on TV.
Make yourself nervous during practice. There are several ways to do this:
Make a video of your practice.
Make an audio recording of your practice.
Play your piece for someone over the phone.
Get your family to be your audience for a trial performance.
Go somewhere away from home and practice. If people can hear you, that's good.
Notice details. When you get good at something, you might start doing it automatically without really thinking. This is not ideal when you're preparing to perform. You want to keep your mind engaged in every detail. Sometimes it helps to speak what you are doing aloud. "Left hand G-flat." "Forte for eight measures." Etc.
Get used to your breathing. I tend to feel that my breathing is loud when I'm performing. It's not really. I'm just more aware of it when I'm nervous. So it sometimes helps to listen to yourself breathing during practice.
Remove objects that are usually in your field of view. Take the stack of books off of the piano. Move the lamp to a different place. Take a picture off of the wall. You might be surprised at how much your peripheral vision plays into how familiar a place feels.
Don't take anxiety medication or drink alcohol before your performance if you will be playing from memory. Both of these things will affect your ability to remember. A little glass of wine or a weak mimosa may help you calm down a bit beforehand if you are playing from the score. One size does not fit all in this regard. The only way to really know how your performance will be impacted by anxiety medication or alcohol is through trial and error.
Embrace your nervousness. Think of it as excitement about sharing your music. Let it help you be in the moment and fully receptive to the music you are making.
Continually silence the thoughts that try to invade your mind during performance. As soon as you indulge the thought that you are doing a great job, you'll mess up. If you beat yourself up because you botch a note you've never missed before, you're just increasing the odds that you'll hit another clunker. You may have to silence these voices several times during your performance.
Remind yourself to stay focused throughout your piece. A good performance is about the music, not about you, so keep your focus on what you are doing as you play. Sometimes this is just a matter of mentally saying, "Focus," a handful of times during a piece.
An expressive performance is much better than a merely note-perfect performance. Don't put too much stock in wrong notes. Put lots of stock in playing musically and expressively.
If you would like to learn more about ways to deal with performance anxiety, you will find help in these wonderful books:
Students: This one is worth double live performance credits!
Melia Garber is a friend of mine. She is a fabulous pianist, and you will love seeing and hearing her play. Geronimo Oyenard is a wonderful violinist. I'm sure this concert will be great! Thanks to the alert parent who shared this info!
Two chances to go:
Saturday, September 22, 7:30 pm Hollins University, Talmadge Hall
Sunday, October 7, 3:00 pm at Virginia Heights Baptist Church
Why doesn't your child want to practice? I will list some possible reasons, but let's first realize that practicing piano is not the same thing as playing the piano. Practicing involves doing new things slowly and reviewing old things repeatedly. It can be compared to doing homework or going to the gym. Some people enjoy homework and working out, and some people enjoy practicing piano. For most of us, though, these are tasks we make ourselves complete in order to get the results we want (or that our parents demand). Before I make you lose all hope, I promise to share some ways to make practicing more fun. We can't take the work element out of it completely, but we can lose the cloud-of-doom aspect with a bit of strategy.
Let's start by trouble-shooting for problems. Are any of these issues getting in the way?
Your child does not have a tuned instrument to use.
Your child forgets to practice.
Other family members complain that they can't hear the TV during practice.
Piano practicing is the last thing on the to-do list.
Any and all sports are more important than practicing piano.
You don't think you are qualified to help your child practice.
The piano books are still out in the car.
There is no set piano practice time each day.
The pianist would rather play his old favorites than his new assignment.
Mom and Dad leave it completely to the child to remember to practice.
Wait. I'm supposed to know if my child practices?
Do any of these ring true for you? It's okay. We're all just humans here. Don't despair, because there is hope. I've observed many families' methods over the years, and I can share the secrets of the most successful practicers with you.
Ask to see your child's assignment book and look at the week's assignment.
Say things like, "Will you play your new piece for me again? I really think it's starting to sound good."
Practice smart instead of practicing hard. Focus on the items assigned for a little while each day. Don't skip the hard stuff, but don't spend a long time trying to perfect a tricky passage in one sitting either.
Keep a pencil on the piano. Circle, jot, and cross-out freely. There are no points for keeping your music pristine. Use a pencil instead of a pen, and try to avoid writing so many notes and reminders that you look at those all the time instead of your actual music.
Sit with your child for at least a few minutes during practice. You don't have to know anything about music. Just be interested.
ALWAYS be positive. NEVER fight about piano practice.
Cramming for your piano lesson by skipping six days of practice and doing an extra long session the day before the lesson is like trying to lose five pounds in one day. (And I've tried that.) Spread your practice time out. Do many short sessions instead of one or two long ones.
Remember that practicing is about improving little by little. Tell your child that you are proud of his effort.
Positive reinforcement: good. Threats: bad.
Make sure practicing is on YOUR radar. Parents sometimes have no idea that practicing between lessons is a huge part of progressing. They might not think they play a roll in their child's practicing.
Don't be a perfectionist. A wrong note is just a wrong note.
If you hear the same wrong note over and over (and over and over) again, it's time to write a hint on the music. If you have no idea how to do that, don't worry about it. You can just write me a note, make a video of the problem spot and send it to me (if you're super-ambitious), or just let it slide until lesson day. PS: If you can gently suggest that something doesn't sound quite right when your child gets to a specific place in the music, go for it.
Set a timer for 10 minutes, and ask your child to try practicing carefully for that long. When the time's up, stop. Repeat tomorrow.
Have the piano tuner come out for a visit. Most pianos need to be tuned a minimum of once a year. Twice is usually better.
These ideas should get you and your child going on the right path. A rule of thumb is this: if you don't see the golden words, "Practicing Star!" in more than half of your child's lesson notes each semester, Junior needs to spend more time at the piano, and Mom or Dad need to do a little more in the way of active encouragement. It's not something that rests entirely on the child's shoulders. (This is the tough love portion of my message.) A week here or there with no practicing star is completely normal, but most children are capable of earning a star the majority of weeks. I'll do my best to assign music that challenges but doesn't overwhelm. I'll make as many assignments "fun" as I possibly can and demonstrate the best ways to practice at home. In between lessons is your time to take what we start in the studio and help move it along a bit. No musical expertise is required...encouragement and consistency will do the trick!
9/11/01. 8:50 a.m.
I was throwing a load of laundry into the washing machine and sipping my morning coffee. My husband was in the shower, and our boys were in bed. When I turned on the TV to watch the morning news, Bryant Gumbel was talking about an "accident" that had happened a few moments ago: a small plane had crashed into one of the twin towers in NYC. Our 11-year-old son had previously been fascinated with the twin towers, so I woke him up and asked him to join me in front of the TV. We were homeschooling, so there was no rush to get off to school. My husband looked on from the bathroom as he finished getting ready for work. As we sat there, unalarmed, a second plane flew into the towers. We noticed it several minutes before Bryant Gumbel realized there was a second explosion. Suddenly, it hit everyone. We were under attack. These were not accidents. By now, our older son was awake as well, and the whole family was glued to the TV. You know how it felt. Unreal. Impossible.
When our boys were younger, I had this tendency to "normalize" everything as a sort of protective mechanism for them...and for myself. So I went about my business and moved the clean laundry into the dryer while the men continued to watch television. I simply could not wrap my head around what was happening, so I escaped reality by doing housework. By the time the laundry had dried, the towers were collapsing. Actually collapsing. The inconceivable was unfolding before our eyes.
I kept doing laundry. I couldn't do anything else. I didn't cry, I didn't make phone calls, and I didn't cancel the day's appointments. In my mind, I felt that doing so would be a sign of weakness to the boys and a sort of "giving in" to whoever did this awful thing to us. My husband went to work. We started our homeschool lessons with a writing assignment about the attacks on the towers. Parents eventually started calling to ask if piano lessons were still on. Yes. Piano lessons are still on. The normal would be our salvation. At least that was the plan.
I decided to take the boys out to lunch at El Rodeo - their favorite restaurant. On the way, I made note of the fact that Main Street was almost deserted. When we arrived at the restaurant, no one was there except the employees. That's when I started to question my sanity. Obviously, I was not normal. I took my boys out to eat on the day of the attacks.
Later in the afternoon, students arrived on schedule for their piano lessons. We didn't discuss the events of the morning unless the children wanted to. One boy told me that his mother couldn't stop crying.
As the horrific stories of those who occupied the towers began to be told on television, I shut down. I wanted all televisions in our house to be turned off. It was too unbearable to watch. This continued for days and weeks. Each story seemed more tragic than the last. I was haunted by an unthinkable possibility: we might be attacked again.
Looking back, I wonder if my inability to outwardly process the tragedy and its consequences and implications led to physical injury, because I suffered with a six-month case of Linburg-Comstock Syndrome from September 2001 to March 2002. I couldn't play piano during that entire time. I taught lessons by pointing to keys and singing to students. No demonstrating at all. The only reason I question that the injury was brought on by the September 11 attacks is that it started the week prior and only became severe afterward. Probably just a coincidence...
May those who still suffer find comfort today, and may we never forget how it felt to live through 9/11/01 ourselves.
It's the start of a new school year, and teachers everywhere have decluttered, organized, spruced up, and decorated to help their students feel welcome and excited about a new season of learning. I've done a little of all of those things myself, and today I whipped out out a musical welcome banner for the front door. It took me all of an hour to make this from start to finish because I've got a handy machine called a Cricut Imagine. I told it what shapes to cut and what patterns to print on the paper. If you don't have a fancy machine like an Imagine, you can still make something like this by hand. You would just need to buy preprinted paper and perhaps cut out less elaborate shapes than sixteenth notes for the letters. I'm pleased with the way this turned out and hope it stays put when the door starts opening and closing every 30 minutes!
Mrs. Boles and I have selected a program of piano duets and duos that we think you guys will love. No stuffy, high-brow stuff on this program! It's all fun and familiar music that you could learn to play yourself some day. Here's a sampling:
I'll be looking for students to do various jobs during the event. Here are the positions that need to be filled:
Photographer
Score Keeper
Program Distributor
Page-turners
Drawing Assistant
Emcee
Artist for program cover
Mrs. Boles will probably seek to fill the same positions from her studio, so there will be at least two students needed for each job. Let me know if you are interested in one of these!
